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Gocoanut Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with coconut, eggs, milk, and sugar, topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Gocoanut Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in water until tender, then drain.

  2. Place the macaroni in a pie dish and mix in the desiccated coconut.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the milk and add sugar to taste.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the macaroni, ensuring it is well covered.

Bake and serve

  1. Dot with small pieces of butter.

  2. Bake in the oven until golden brown.

  3. Let cool slightly, then sprinkle with castor sugar or garnish with fruits.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the milk mixture into a custard that holds the macaroni together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Desiccated coconut
Adds flavour, sweetness and a chewy texture to the dish.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy base that the custard soaks into and sets around.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture over the macaroni, ensuring it is well covered.. If the custard does not fully cover the macaroni, dry patches stay uncoated and bake unevenly. Eggs set as they heat, so coverage gives an even, cohesive custard.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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